Social Influencing Minor Change

[FinePoint]

"While it does not seem combat applicable, this skill can be used in many ways..."

This should be changed on the Social Influencing page to "While it does not usually seem combat applicable..."

This is because it is very possible for it to be combat applicable.
Courier 6 is one of the best examples I can think of, being able to rapidly pacify drug-crazed fiends, ruthless warlords, and even someone who was plotting to kill him for years because he nuked his home. There's also cases of him convincing people to kill themselves.

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"But someone can't give up due to SBA!"
Not quite. They can give up if the other person makes them:

This doesn't prevent a character being made to give up, because the other character manipulates them via things like, for example, mind control, fear inducement, psychological tricks or superhuman charisma.

Perhaps it would be worth noting this on the page as well, but not too important to me.

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Since he's such a good example, The Courier should be added to the list of notable users. I mean, we use Fallout as the image for a reason. It's known for its characters with potent Social Influencing through the Charisma S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat (which is canon).

 

[Funnimane]

what's an SBA

 

[FinePoint]

what's an SBA

Standard Battle Assumptions.

 

[Stillwinston]

All of that seems legit to me

 

[Shmooply]

And so the Courier, who had cheated death in the Content Revision Thread outside the forum, cheated death once again, and the Social Influencing page was forever changed.​

Yea, I obviously agree.

 

[SamanPatou]

I agree, and Social Influencing has countless applications in battle, but even then SBA and vs matches don't have weight on how we index things on the wiki.

 

[FinePoint]

I agree, and Social Influencing has countless applications in battle, but even then SBA and vs matches don't have weight on how we index things on the wiki.

True. Even more reason not to assume it's not combat applicable.
The entire SI page seems to assume that it can't be strong enough to make someone immediately give up, or otherwise immediately end a fight, which I don't think is true.

It probably needs to be re-written to be more inclusive in general, but I didn't feel comfortable making a full draft.
At the very least I didn't want it explicitly excluded with this statement.

 

[Antvasima]

To me this seems uncontroversial to apply. Are you willing to handle it, Saman?

 

[XSOULOFCINDERX]

I agree with the OP.

 

[SamanPatou]

To me this seems uncontroversial to apply. Are you willing to handle it, Saman?

Done, at least what concerns adding the "usual", because as of now I'm not going to start rewriting the page entirely.

 

[Antvasima]

No problem. Thank you for helping out.

Is there anything left to do here, or should we close this thread then?

 

[Bobsican]

Uh... I recall Social Influencing wasn't meant to be taken as hax on its own for our purposes when it was done. Therefore, cases that go into "usable" stuff for vs threads should instead be labeled with another power. If anything we could make a Supernatural Charisma page or so.

 

[FinePoint]

Uh... I recall Social Influencing wasn't meant to be taken as hax on its own for our purposes when it was done. Therefore, cases that go into "usable" stuff for vs threads should instead be labeled with another power. If anything we could make a Supernatural Charisma page or so.

No offense, but what's the point? Why label something as an ability but not allow it be usable? That seems like a stupid practice to me which breaks the trend for no reason.

If that was the goal, then delete the power and include social skills in intelligence.

 

[XSOULOFCINDERX]

No offense, but what's the point? Why label something as an ability but not allow it be usable? That seems like a stupid practice to me which breaks the trend for no reason.

If that was the goal, then delete the power and include social skills in intelligence.

Agreed.

 

[Bobsican]

No offense, but what's the point? Why label something as an ability but not allow it be usable? That seems like a stupid practice to me which breaks the trend for no reason.

If that was the goal, then delete the power and include social skills in intelligence.

Users at the time thought it was a good idea to do, and keep in mind the page was started by an user with a quite questionable reputation as is, so yeah, I'd be fine with removing it TBH.

 

[FinePoint]

To add on that: plenty of powers can vary on combat applicability. Some people have very minor transmutation that turns apples into oranges and otherwise doesn't help them, some people could kill God with it. We list it either way.

The justification should be enough to indicate if it's a case of just being rather charismatic, or being so charismatic you could convince a healthy person to kill themselves in five minutes.

No reason to gatekeep its potency, otherwise we're just ignoring examples, or falsely putting very strong Social Influencing into Mind Manipulation even if it's really not.

 

[XSOULOFCINDERX]

To add on that: plenty of powers can differ on combat applicability. Some people have very minor reality warping that turns apples into oranges and otherwise doesn't help them, some people could destroy the universe with it. We list it either way.

The justification should be enough to indicate if it's a case of just being rather charismatic, or being so charismatic you could convince a healthy person to kill themselves in five minutes.

No reason to gatekeep its potency, otherwise we're just ignoring examples, or falsely putting very strong Social Influencing into Mind Manipulation even if it's really not.

Right?

 

[SamanPatou]

I've debated ten thousand times why Social Influencing deserves a page and I'm ready to repeat myself even more times.

First, it being an intelligence-based ability is a moot point, because we already have several non-supernatural abilities, such as genius intelligence, martial arts, pressure points, vehicular mastery weapon mastery, stealth mastery etc... and some types of information analysis, prediction, technique mimicry and so on.

Then what concerns vs matches isn't relevant to indexing, which is the main purpose of the wiki, and also the reason why we list minor and non-combat applicable P&A.

Lastly, Social Influencing is arguably one of the abilities with the higher amount of applications in combat.
You can distract your enemy, deceive them, lead them into error, influence their behavior and state of mind, make them loose attention or make erroneous evaluations on you, control the flow and unfolding of the battle according to your aims and a million more things and variations of what I've just listed.
And if I start talking about the applications it has outside of battle or with preparation/a sufficient amount of time I could very well talk all day.

 

[Antvasima]

I agree with Saman. The social influencing ability page should stay.

 

[FinePoint]

I agree too, I was being sarcastic about deleting it.

Since Saman is volunteering, I do think rewriting the page is a good idea. I'll await their draft.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. No problem.

 

[FinePoint]

In particular, I think the current page is both written with versus threads too much in mind, and biased against limiting the potential of SI as a power.

If it could be written in a neutral informative way which explores its most likely applications without bias, I think that would be preferable.

 

[Antvasima]

What do the other staff members here think?

 

[FinePoint]

Was this ever resolved?

 

[Antvasima]

What currently remains to be done here?

 

[FinePoint]

Done, at least what concerns adding the "usual", because as of now I'm not going to start rewriting the page entirely.

What currently remains to be done here?

Saman apparently volunteered to rewrite the page entirely, and we were waiting for their draft.

 

[Antvasima]

Saman apparently volunteered to rewrite the page entirely, and we were waiting for their draft.

Okay.

@SamanPatou

 

[SamanPatou]

Unfortunately this isn't the period for me to work on this, I prefer to spend the little time I have to dedicate to the wiki on more impending revisions.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. No problem. Please make a note about this task, with a link to this thread, for later though.